Built on Their Backs is a photographic journey into the unforgiving world of Bangladesh’s brick kilns, where labor is relentless, and life itself is shaped—quite literally—by the weight of industry.

These vast, smoke-filled landscapes, stretching as far as the eye can see, are the silent engines of urban expansion. They supply the bricks that build homes, offices, and entire cities, fueling economic growth. Yet, beneath this progress lies a hidden reality: the backbreaking toil of countless workers whose hands shape the very foundations of modern life but whose own existence remains unseen and unacknowledged.

Men, women, and even children labor under an unrelenting sun, their bodies covered in dust and sweat. From dawn until dusk, they lift, mold, and stack thousands of bricks—each one a fragment of their own strength, a silent testament to their struggle. Their wages are painfully low, their shifts long and punishing. Many of them live on-site, in makeshift shelters fashioned from the very bricks they produce. These crude dwellings offer little respite from the suffocating heat, the omnipresent dust, and the thick smoke that stains the sky. In this world, entire families are caught in an unending cycle of labor, bound by necessity, poverty, and a lack of alternatives.

Yet, even within this hardship, resilience endures. It is written in their eyes, in the quiet determination etched into their faces. Their hands, thick with layers of clay and ash, tell stories of endurance, sacrifice, and an unwavering will to survive. Children, too young for such burdens, run barefoot between the stacks, their laughter a fleeting contrast to the weight of their reality.

This series seeks to expose the human cost behind one of the world’s most fundamental industries. Built on Their Backs is not just a documentation of labor—it is a tribute to those who, brick by brick, bear the weight of progress on their shoulders while remaining invisible to the world they help construct.